Richard Hermann
University of New Mexico
This essay seeks to establish more profitable methods for analysis and
pedagogy of American jazz, in particular for the music called "bop"
and for the music of the great alto saxophonist Charlie Parker, nicknamed
"Bird." Bop is of particular importance because it is considered
by some to be the first "movement" in jazz that provided a conscious
aesthetic exploration of its material that moves beyond the realm of entertainment.
In addition to defining new methods and concepts for jazz theory and pedagogy,
this essay has as its central focus an in depth study of Charlie Parker
and Benny Harris's composition "Ornithology" and of Parker's classic
recorded solo on that composition of March 28, 1946.
Before that analysis is presented, the harmonic model for "Ornithology,"
"How High the Moon," is examined. Typical jazz theory and pedagogy
techinques of studying improvised solos are considered next along with relevant
topics from European "classical" music theory of the mid-eighteenth
century. A new "tonally adjusted combined species counterpoint model"
derived from these 18th century ideas and ideas set forth by Heinrich Schenker
and his followers is presented. That model will be used in the analysis
of Bird's famed "Ornithology" solo.
This essay's scrutiny of the voice-leading structures of "How High
the Moon," "Ornithology," and Parker's improvisation on "Ornithology"
will show that the relatively pure voice-leading of Renaissance counterpoint,
as tonally adjusted in this essay, seems a more powerful explanatory
tool than conventional notions of jazz harmony. These results are unexpected--ad
perhaps to some controversial--and this essay should be a goad to reexamine
jazz theory and to test these concepts on other works of the early bop repertoire.